THE SOURCE OF LOVE

I have been doing research on three books that I am asking God to let me finish. Their working titles are FAITH, HOPE, and AGAPE. From time to time I intend to give you glimpses of each of these books in my blog posts. This is the first.

In the introduction to my book, Joy, I said that whole book was to some extent a definition of joy. That is not the case with AGAPE. In this book I would like to show you powerful elements of love and help you develop genuine love in your life. But love is much more difficult to define. That is primarily because of its infinite personal source. Agape comes from God and God alone.

Look with me at 1 John chapter 4:7 and 8.

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."

Do you get the force of this statement? "God is Love!" "God is agape!"

In the same context verses 16 and 17 say,

"And we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him."

This gives us a glimpse into the nature of the triune God. Love is not something God developed later. He did not create us so He would have someone to love. Love is the very nature of the infinite God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit loved one another eternally. The first lines of this poem on John 1:1 reaches for this truth.

In the beginning, from before the beginning

There was God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

In perfect union, eternal love communing."

So verse 19 of 1 John 4 concludes that we love because God loved us first.

Love comes from God. We love out of relationship with Him.

Life-long Repentance

In Matthew 4:17 we are told that after His temptation in the wilderness and the arrest of John the Baptist Jesus began His preaching ministry with the call for repentance. "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

Interestingly enough, the word the Lord uses here in Greek, the language of the New Testament, demands that the action of repentance be continual. When we come to Christ we enter into life-long repentance. Of course, this means a permanent change of thinking. But in our daily lives it also means we must continue to turn our hearts away from sins that inevitably creep in. Let me suggest three necessary aspects of continuing repentance.

1. A Sensitive Heart

How do you respond when someone accuses you of wrong? Do you put all your energy into defending yourself? Do you automatically attack? Or do you pray? You can ask God, "Father, is this an opportunity to repent?" Since our ultimate accuser is Satan, you may well discover that the accusation is not completely true. But even in this situation you may have an opportunity to bring your heart and your thinking more in line with your Heavenly Father's. If your heart is sensitive, what the enemy intends for evil will only make you more Christlike.

2. A Thoughtful Heart

The freedom to examine your heart comes to from saturating your mind in the truth of the gospel. Have you memorized verses that give you God's assurance? Do you think daily about their wonderful truth? You don't have to defend yourself. Jesus is actively defending you before the throne of God. (1 John 2:1) You are not condemned. (Romans 8:1) God sees you washed in His blood. (Revelation 1:5) There are hundreds more!

3. A Comforted Heart.

To react in repentance rather than defensiveness you need to be immersed in the love of God that His Spirit desires to lavish upon you. Do you regularly Give thanks for the love of Christ? Do you tremble in wonder at God's amazing grace? Only in such assurance will you be free to continually examine your heart and allow God's Spirit to bring it nearer to His own.

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KEYS TO HAPPYNESS

I thought about using the word blessedness in my title this week. Of course that would have turned readers away in droves. But blessedness is really what I want to write about even though we seldom, if ever, use such a word in these days. I was surprised to see it still listed in my Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. We tend to replace blessedness with words like success or happiness. But other words do not capture the concept of the blessing of God on our lives. So blessedness is still used in our English translations of Scripture. And while it means so much more, blessedness touches the core of true happiness.

One of my favorite scripture passages that deals with this crucial concept is Psalm 1. It begins, "Blessed is the man." Let me point out several important perspectives of happiness that God shows us in this Psalm.

First, Real happiness is Deep. If we used the psychological definition of happiness we might call happiness, contentment. But contentment is contingent upon how a person feels in a given moment. Your momentary contentment may be shattered in the next instant.

In Psalm 1:3 we read about a truly happy person. "He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season." His happiness does not depend on what is happening in a moment or season. You can trust God in painful times if the source of your blessings are deeper than what is happening on the surface. Yes, you are weeping in this long night of pain or sorrow. But it need not overwhelm you. You can trust God to bring you into His joy in The Morning.

True happiness is Heavy. The life of the person depending on God is sometimes uncomfortably heavy with trials. But you can rejoice in knowing that the heaviness is fruit being matured in your branches. The chaff is not heavy. But it will be blown away.

Finally, Complete happiness is Ultimate. If you asked Kids, who are exhausted and playing poorly in a high school ball game with their team far behind, "Is this is a good game? They would say? "No! This is a terrible game." But if they somehow turn everything around, and come back to win against impossible odds in the final seconds, what would they say about that game?

In this corrupt world I am sometimes tired and weak, foolish and sinful. But I can grin in the struggle because I  know how it will end. Jesus already took the penalty for me. God has promised to lay on my shoulders all the glory that Jesus earned. Romans 8:18 and following assures me that nothing I endure now can compare with the glory that will be revealed in me.

LOOKING TO OUR HOPE

You occasionally hear God blamed for the condition of the world because He created Adam and Eve already knowing they would sin and plunge all of us into darkness.

Of course you have to consider that God also knew the hope set before us in creation. In Romans 8:18-20 Paul says, "I consider our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that shall be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.  For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it in hope."

Let's consider the possible worlds God could have created. He could have abstained from creating any world at all. He was eternally self-sufficient. He could have created a world without sentient beings. He could have created intelligent beings who could not choose to reject Him. But in none of these worlds would we have the choice to love him, the challenge of true devotion, the chance to obey in the face of temptation. And none of these options would give us the possibility of repentance, redemption, or the wonder of grace as we know it.

When Jesus commanded the stone to be removed from the tomb of Lazarus in John 11, Martha protested, "Lord, by this time he will stink."

I too stink. Our world stinks of sin and corruption. Jesus answered Martha and me, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?"

That day they saw a pantomimed foretaste of what we hope for. Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

Romans 8 continues with verses 22-25.

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is not hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

Suppose two people were given an odious task. One is told, “At the end of one year you will be paid $10,000 and be sent on your way.” The other is told, “At the end of one year you will be rewarded with forty million dollars and be revered by the entire world for the rest of your life.”

Which one will be better able to endure? In a hard world you can have a great hope.

In his book 10 Philosophical Mistakes, Mortimer Adler posed this question. If you were asked in the middle of a ball game with your favorite team so far behind that they could never catch up, "Is this a good game?", what would you say?

But suppose your team comes back at the very end and to win against impossible odds. That would be a better game than you could have imagined while your team was behind.

We are hoping against sight and smell in the promise of the Sovereign God who created the heavens and the earth that we will see glory beyond anything anyone can imagine!

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BLESSED

We don't hear the word blessed much in these days although it is probably not in danger of dropping out of the English language. We need a word for what God alone can do in our lives. There is a sense in which every person and every creature on earth is blessed by God. He gives us food and drink and every breath of air we breathe. But we find the fullest expression of blessing laid out by Jesus in His declaration of blessedness in Luke 6 and Matthew 5. In Luke the blessings are set against woes.

These blessed statements clearly represent the values given by Jesus to be sought by His followers. They, however, are counterintuitive. They go against our innate tendencies and the world's definition value and success. Jesus begins in Luke 6:18 with "Blessed are the poor." Who thinks poverty is good? He concludes the Matthew 5 passage by saying, "You are blessed when people insult you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you on account of me."

There are at least three crucial perspectives of these beatitudes given us by Jesus. First, we are blessed in spite of these things. You may be poor in the world's goods, but you have become a child of the King! James 2:5 says God has chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom promised to those who love God.

But we are also blessed by these difficult things. God uses difficult and painful things to develop the character of His children. So James chapter 1 tells us to count it all Joy when we fall into all kinds of trials. These blessings are not merely external like the things the world values. There is a couplet in my book of poems from The Gospel of John[1] that reads.

"Then you will come to know and understand

All that you longed for, but you couldn’t be."

God uses difficulties not simply to give us things, but to make us into joyful people. He makes us meek rather than people who manipulate to get what we want. We become merciful rather than pointing out how life is not fair to us. And all the worldly desires are removed so by our pure hearts we come to see the face of God.

Finally, we are blessed eternally by these values. The beatitudes must be seen in God's perspective of time. All the good things of this world will end in loss and sorrow and grief. But the good brought about in our lives by the Spirit of God is eternal.

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[1] https://goo.gl/0c2JxP

NATIONAL UNITY 2

I wrote last week that I am alarmed over the seriousness of our national disunity in America. In that blog I pointed out that Jesus did not come to bring unity but a sword. Believers are called to certain convictions that we can never compromise and that the world may never accept. 

But I believe it is more important that I write to you about how to interface with a society that differs from us at such crucial points.

Some years ago I read about some of the people involved in the Chinese church's Back to Jerusalem Movement being amazed that they were not praying for the fall of the communist government. They were instead praying for God to work in it.

1 Peter 2:13-15 reads

"Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every Authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men."

Paul wrote something nearly identical in Romans 13. These men lived in a world where Christians were already being persecuted. Paul appealed to Caesar when he was arrested in Jerusalem. But he stood up to the authorities who wanted to quietly release him and Silas in Ephesus.

How does that speak to us today? Could King George have been as wicked as Nero who burned Christians alive on poles to light his garden parties? How do we know which to do in the circumstances that we face today?

We need to begin by saying we will have to struggle with the issues that we face. There are no simple answers to modern questions.

We will have to struggle with right and wrong. It will not always be simple or obvious.

And we will need to struggle over our witness and the glory of God. This will include decency, integrity, humility, and honesty.

And most importantly, we must struggle to discern the will of God.

I basically agree with Francis Schaefer's statement in The Christian Manifesto that a government that becomes breeches its calling by God should be overthrown. But I believe he missed a point in his argument. That is the issue of God's timing. When God told Abraham he was going to give his descendants the land of Canaan, He said they had not filled up their sins. Four hundred years would pass before God said it was time.

I don't know where we are in America. But I know it is the will of God to pray for our country and for our leaders by name and by need. And I will struggle in prayer and God's word over the issues of politics and voting and our country.

NATIONAL UNITY 1

I have been alarmed of late over the bitterness and seriousness of our national disunity in America. A few elections back I thought I was being funny by asking people who they were going to vote against for president. I stopped asking that because no one thought it was a joke.  Of course this is not restricted to America. Much of the world suffers from similar or worse political divisiveness. This is a dangerous fact about our world.

I have longed for a president who wanted to use the bully pulpit to bring us nearer to national unity. But for those of us who are serious about the Bible and faith in Jesus, I need to admit to a different perspective. In Matthew 10:34 Jesus warned us that He did not come to bring peace but a sword. If we follow Jesus, many things about us will offend others.

Many today will find our morals offensive. I want to say it lovingly and wisely, but I will have to stand against the murder of over a million innocents a year by the practice of abortion. I am going to have to tell people that I love that homosexual behavior is sinful and homosexual marriage unnatural.

Some will find our thinking offensive no matter how gently and respectfully we express it. 

Ideas have conclusions. And our thinking will go counter to worldly thinking. That is why we see some of the thinking of our founding fathers being rejected by society and ignored by bodies like the Supreme Court.

Some will even be offended by the gospel. It will offend some people that their own righteousness will never save them. Others will be offended that a wicked person can be forgiven.

What are we to do? We should pray for unity in our country. I believe we would be foolish and disobedient if we did not. But there are issues in America where we will have to stand with our Lord even against unity in our country.

I have more to say on this subject. There are things we can do to work for unity. But lest I take away from what I have written here, I need to wait until next week to deal with them. In the meantime, I encourage you to think about what Jesus said.